The World Trade Center Transportation Hub

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The World Trade Center Transportation Hub, also known as the Oculus, serves more than a million commuters every week. It is a multi-layered junction of 12 New York subway lines, and a PATH station with New Jersey-bound subways to Hoboken, Harrison (Red Bull Arena), Newark (with connections to Newark International Airport), and four stations in Jersey City. The Westfield World Trade Center is a shopping mall within the complex that has 125 retail spaces. The stunning, cavernous, column-free lobby is illuminated by zenithal light from a 355-foot-long operable skylight. This masterpiece is by architect Santiago Calatrava who designed it based on a model, titled Mother and Child, which he made 15 years prior the design competition. He said the appearance of the exterior is a dove flying out of a child's hands. The Oculus is composed of smooth, white metal-clad steel ribs. It takes its name from the Latin word for eye because of its eye-view of the sky.

The pursuit for the opportunity to build the World Trade Center Transportation Hub was unique and very high profile. The fact that it took twelve years to complete and cost four billion dollars speaks volumes about the amount of work involved. The experience for the proposal and presentation for The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey showed successfully delivered projects that met the demands of the package: infrastructure work that included the demolition and removal of damaged sub-grade structures, underpinning of subway tunnels, and excavation for pedestrian connections. Working on a century of projects in New York City, provided multiple examples of projects that often managed construction around layers of subway tracks. Additionally, the builder repaired the damage from first bombing of the World Trade Center and successfully completed repairs to the neighboring World Financial Center with a total rebuild of the Winter Garden atrium in less than a year's time.

Th Oculus is one of the most remarkable structures to experience. From outside, the large, spiny structure is very modern and cool but hardly prepares a visitor for the awesome expanse of its vast, glowing interior. It has an unexpected spiritual dimension that elevates everything and everyone inside. It is quite remarkable that the design of a hub for gritty and rattling subway trains and nonessential shops you would expect to find in a suburban mall can be this majestic. A stone's throw from the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, and the very site that 3,000 people died on the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Oculus addresses this tragedy with an architectural beauty that exudes hope. The mashup of commuters, tourists and shoppers could be considered disrespectful but the vitality of the place, no matter how pedestrian or commercial, breathes life into a site that was once multiple stories of collapsed building debris. As a placemaking space it is as brilliant on many levels as the structure is.